Monday, April 14, 2003

After 93 years of inspiring

After 93 years of inspiring all who met her, my grandmother Zerline died this morning at about 9 am local time in Lima, Ohio.  Her demise was not unexpected, as she had been in sharp decline for several days after seven years in a nursing home with senile dementia, ultimately confined to a wheelchair.  That wasn’t her.  I remember her as a veritable force of nature; she was an extrordinary woman and I will probably be saying something more particular about her soon.  Almost a year ago, her husband died, his body tired and weak, riddled by disease, but his mind sharp nearly till the end.  Nana had the opposite experience, and her passing I see as a release for an indomitable spirit.  Take off, Nana.

At such times as this I sometimes find myself thumbing through a 1973 copy of the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.  Sometimes I don’t get much out of it but sometimes it’s almost like the I Ching.  I’m not sure what to make of the poem I read this morning but I’ll share it because I liked it. 

Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural.  I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses. 

Louis MacNeice, 1935